November 30, 2011

The last decade of war and the sour economy has left many Americans unwilling to engage in foreign-policy much as it was during the 1930s when isolationism took over.

This was partly evident in last week’s foreign policy debate when domestic issues such as Obamacare and the national debt took center stage.

Now is not the time to withdraw from the world. Russia and China remain significant threats to our national security through their proxies in Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. And they are more than eager to fill the void left by the appearance of America’s decline.

As Jeffrey Bosco reported in The Weekly Standard, China has used American distractions in the Middle East to build up its power in East Asia:

Washington policymakers managed to convince themselves that on counter-terrorism, as well as on counter-proliferation and the growing North Korea nuclear threat, China was a committed, reliable, and essential partner—a “responsible stakeholder.” What China was doing to prepare for war against Taiwan, and against the United States should it come to Taiwan’s aid, largely became a back-burner issue. The same was true of China’s complicity in proliferating dangerous weapons and materials to the world’s most dangerous states, including North Korea and Iran.

And the Obama administration’s coddling of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, Egypt and Syria should be a cause for alarm where the GOP presidential candidates should be building an alternative message and strategy for confronting this thorny problem.

My feeling is that we ought to be pursuing a very active policy of regime change in both Iran and Syria going back to my time during the Bush administration. These are regimes that are not going to change as long as they are in power.

It was foolish of the Obama administration to ever believe that Bashar al-Assad was ever a reformer as they kept saying over and over, and over again.

We can see now how far from the truth that is. We can’t live in a world of illusion, and that is as much as we hoped for the best as a result of the Arab spring, we can’t make policy according to our hopes and aspirations for how it’s going to turn out.

We have to make our policies in a very realistic fashion and base our policies on what’s actually happening, not on what we wish would happen.

Last week, former NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark defended the Obama administration’s inaction during the 2009 Persian Spring on the grounds that the president was trying to “reset” our relations with Iran.

How has Iran repaid Obama’s kindness?

In the past few days we’ve seen a near repeat of Iran’s 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy by Iranian “students”. Sunday’s AP report said:

“Iranian students stormed the British Embassy in Tehran Tuesday, breaking down the door, throwing around papers and replacing the British flag with an Iranian one. Iran's state-run Press TV reported that police had the incident under control, but Britain's Foreign Office called the situation ‘fluid’ and said ‘details are still emerging.’”

If Jimmy Carter had been re-elected in 1980, we’d still be confronting the Soviet Union today.

So far, only Newt Gingrich has enunciated a coherent strategy for confronting Iran, which has been the nexus of global terrorism and regional instability since the late 1970s.

Gingrich was correct to advocate cutting off Iran’s ability to refine gasoline, which would crush the Iran’s economy. A blockade of Iran would be seen as an act of war by the Iranians, but it’s a necessary evil because the Islamic Republic has been in a state of war with the United States since 1979.

If we do nothing to help Iran’s dissidents to stand up against the mullahs, we will have a nuclear Iran to deal with that likely would act with impunity because it views the United States as a paper tiger.

The GOP presidential candidates cannot afford to put Iran, China, or Russia on the back burner because they pose a mortal threat to our nation.

Obama’s Carteresque policies have only destabilized the world with live in and have done nothing to help us to regain our national prestige.

Whomever becomes the eventual GOP nominee must be ready to confront Iran and our other adversaries on Day 1. We can't have someone who has to learn on the job.

November 29, 2011

Anti-Israel and Muslim-American advocacy groups in the United States are capitalizing on the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) to promote their own agendas.

The Occupy movement started in New York's Zuccotti Park Sept. 17, and spread to more than 100 cities,according to the movement's "unofficial" website. "The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1 percent of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future."

There has been an ongoing debate about the depth of anti-Semitism within the OWS movement, with some finding it rampant and others casting it as a fringe element. Those concerns were heightened Nov. 5 when more than 20 people from the Occupy Boston camp marched into the lobby of that city's Israeli consulate for a sit-in. The group engaged in a series of anti-Israel chants including "Viva Palestina," and "Hey hey, ho ho, Israeli apartheid has got to go!"

The latest example came Nov. 18, when CAIR's New York chapter held a rally, prayers and a march from Occupy Wall Street to make demands including:

· "An immediate end to all racial, ethnic and religious profiling;"

· "The dismantlement and disclosure of all surveillance operations;"

· An "independent commission to investigate all NYPD and CIA operations against the Muslim community." The event was sponsored and endorsed by dozens of organizations, including the New York chapters of the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Council of North AmericaAl-Awda and the Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York.

"Many many other people at Occupy Wall Street stand in solidarity with Muslim communities, and all targets of NYPD, CIA, FBI and government repression," Jen Waller, a representative of the OWS movement and a member of the New York Committee to Stop FBI Repression, said during the rally. She added that we are watching "more and more innocent Muslim men and women [that] are targeted and attract into government orchestrated terrorism schemes."

The crowd of approximately 60 chanted in response to a speaker: "American Muslims have to stand with Occupy Wall Street. For a long time, American Muslims have been scared into silence. Those days are over. We are here in numbers. We are here to pray. We are here to protest. And most of all we are here to raise our voice."

Imam Ayub Abdul Baki of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York delivered a speech saying, "We are also suffering, suffering racism and discrimination. Islamic bashing is on the increase." Baki held up a plaque with the "last sermon of the Prophet Mohammed," calling it "the eternal message of Islam to the world." Baki then discussed the sermon saying "all Muslims as well as non-Muslims should be familiar with this."

Baki's Leadership Council (Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York) is an umbrella organization of mosques and Islamic organizations that claims to serve 850,000 Muslim New Yorkers and is "dedicated to bring Muslims on one platform." Among its members are the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)-NY and the Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Center.

MAS was founded as the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, while ICNA has a track record of radicalism and teaching its members violence and the evils of Jews and America. ICNA issued a press release earlier this month expressing support and sympathy for the OWS protestors.

The youth branch of the Muslim American Society (MAS) held an OWS gathering in Zuccotti Park in late October. "We, the members of Muslim American Society New York and Muslim New Yorkers stand in solidarity with the protesters of Occupy Wall Street on grounds of free speech, right to assemble and justice for all," the advertisement for the event said.

Hatem Bazian, the chairman of the anti-Israel organization American Muslims for Palestine, led a prayer service and delivered a speech late last month as part of Occupy Oakland. Bazian spoke about the amount of money the United States spends on the military, calling the United States "a deaf economy," and stating "We are the number one producers of weapons of mass destruction."

"Allah and his messenger are at war with those who exploit people through usury," CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walidsaid Oct. 21 during a "Sermon about Occupy Wall St Movement & the death of Qadhafi" at a Michigan mosque. "And the world is hungry for this message. The financial and the housing crisis would not be what it is in America I believe, and even some non-Muslim economist wrote if the American financial system was working according to the Islamic banking system. This is a fact," he added.

Walid drew help from the Occupy Detroit movement to hold "Crusades Against Hate" on Nov. 11, which was intended to counter a prayer event being held that same day by an organization that CAIR regards as anti-Muslim.

Other groups have capitalized on the OWS movement to promote anti-Israel messages.

In addition to the Boston sit-in, protesters in Chicago repeated anti-Israel statements made on a megaphone by an Occupy Chicago leader: "The city of Chicago is guilty of supporting the Israelis." The speaker also announced two upcoming demonstrations to protest the "Israeli occupation of the Palestinian land."

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an anti-Israel organization on college campuses across the country, joined an OWS protest last month during its 2011 conference, "Students Confronting Apartheid," at Columbia University.

Approximately 30 SJP students participating in the conference joined protesters at Wall Street, chanting "Occupy Wall Street, Palestine Must Be Free," while carrying Palestinian flags.

This month, activists from Adalah-NY, a radical group that organizes protests against Israeli artists andproducts, went to Zuccotti Park to read a statement advocating boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

"Our aspirations overlap; our struggles converge," the statement said. "Our oppressors, whether greedy corporations or military occupations, are united in profiting from wars, pillage, environmental destruction, repression and impoverishment … Palestinians, too, are part of the 99% around the world that suffer at the hands of the 1% whose greed and ruthless quest for hegemony have led to unspeakable suffering and endless war."

OWS protests also have served as a platform for individuals to make anti-Semitic statements.

"I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government... they need to be run out of this country," an OWS protester in Los Angeles said.

The Emergency Committee for Israel released a video featuring anti-Semitic speech and signs at OWS protests. Signs include statements such as "Hitler's Bankers – Wall St.," and "Google: 1) Wall St. Jews 2) Jewish Billionaires 3) Jews & Fed Rsrv Bank." The video also calls on viewers to contact elected officials to take action against the hate speech.

The anti-Israel agenda associated with the OWS movement led "many Jewish supporters of OWS who do not identify as anti-Zionist" to believe "that they could no longer be associated with the movement," Daniel Sieradski, a Jewish OWS supporter said in an interview earlier this month. "Worse yet, there have been attempts to push Zionists out of the movement by claiming their support for Israel's mere existence is fundamentally racist and as such, they should not be part of any serious social justice movement."

One OWS protest organized by Existence is Resistance worsened the movement's "external impression of being pro-terror," Sieradski said. Existence is Resistance (E.I.R.) is a grassroots organization that promotes"non-violent resistance through cultural arts." E.I.R. hosted a "Kuffeya Day" at New York's Liberty Plaza late last month "in support of Palestinian prisoners, most significantly Majd Ziada." The photo featured alongside the event announcement is a picture of Leila Khaled, a member of the U.S. designated terrorist group thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. During the event a man claiming to be from Afghanistan gave an anti-Semitic tirade, saying that "Yehudi" means "hateful thing." (Yehudi means "Jew" in Arabic).

It's a "Jewish idea to kill Muslims," he added, and that America and Israel are trying to kill Muslims.

Demonstrations like the above have nothing to do with OWS's frustrations with U.S. economic policies. But they show how Islamist groups are using the economic-driven movement to engender hostility toward Israel, and in some cases, toward Jews in general.

November 28, 2011

As the 2012 presidential election looms ever closer, two hard facts confront American politics. The first is that Barack Obama—despite enormous obstacles—could still win next year’s presidential election. The second is that he probably won’t. Both of these propositions deserve close scrutiny.

Arguing that Obama could still win flies in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. Both the president’s approval rating and his critical “re-elect” numbers are in the low- to mid-40% range. No president in modern times has ever won re-election with such low public approval. Furthermore, there’s little reason to think his numbers will dramatically improve between now and next November. Equally ominous, Obama’s low popularity reflects America’s still struggling economy and stubbornly high unemployment. No president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 has been re-elected against the backdrop of such dismal economic conditions. And even in Roosevelt’s troubled times, unemployment had actually dropped during his first term, not risen, as has been the case during Obama’s first term. Given these indisputable facts, it would seem that Obama’s re-election chances are dubious at best.

But they are not, largely because American presidential elections are much more than a simple popularity contest between opposing candidates and competing philosophies. Indeed, history suggests and most political scientists agree that presidential elections are properly understood as a two-step national referendum on the incumbent and his challenger. In the first phase, the electorate decides thumbs up or thumbs down whether it will give the incumbent another term. If the electorate renders thumbs down, the second phase of the referendum is triggered. In it the electorate seeks a challenger who is an acceptable alternative to the rejected incumbent.

This vital contingency, the search for an acceptable alternative to the incumbent, explains why we now have a tight national election when by historical standards Republicans should be on their way to a landslide victory.

The electorate has already decided, largely on the basis of poor economic growth and jobs, that Obama should not have a second term. But the second critical referendum step remains unresolved. If in the end the GOP does not nominate an acceptable alternative, the American electorate next November will hold its collective nose and vote Obama a second term. Thus, which candidate the Republicans finally nominate along with the condition of the economy are the factors likely to determine the election’s outcome.

This inevitably sets up four possible scenarios, one favorable to Obama, one favorable to Republicans, and two more with uncertain effects on the race: (1) a declining or stagnant economy and Republicans nominate an acceptable alternative; (2) a declining or stagnant economy and Republicans nominate an unacceptable alternative; (3) an improving economy and Republicans nominate an acceptable alternative; or (4) an improving economy and Republicans nominate an unacceptable alternative.

Scenario one (bad economy, acceptable challenger) all but guarantees a GOP victory. Scenario four (improving economy, unacceptable challenger) does the same for Obama. But scenario two (bad economy, unacceptable challenger) and scenario three (improving economy, acceptable challenger) may favor either party.

What if anything may either campaign do at this point to influence events, given these fundamental forces now in play?

For Obama there seems little to do beyond squeezing as much improvement out of the economy as he can while making the case that his opponent has no plan to make things better. To win he must be lucky in the GOP candidate he ultimately faces. Republicans, on the other hand, do control their own fate. They have to nominate a candidate that will appeal to sufficient moderates and independents in the critical battleground states to win the magical 270 electoral votes.

Do Republicans have such a candidate running for the nomination? The question allows no unqualified answer. However, on the basis of numerous head-to-head trial run polls measuring Obama versus various GOP aspirants, there seems at least one Republican, Mitt Romney, who is an acceptable alternative to most voters. There may be others, but clearly voters consider at least Romney to be a viable candidate.

Also auspicious for Republicans is their historical tendency to forge consensus from chaos and unity from disunity after deeply divisive nomination contests. The turmoil now raging within the GOP may be a distant memory when they gather for their nominating convention in Tampa next August.

That said, however, it must be acknowledged that the GOP contest underway is far from over. During 2011, five separate candidates have at least briefly led in trial heat polls. At one point there was a statistical tie between four different candidates (Paul, Cain, Gingrich, and Romney), and the active field now still numbers eight candidates approaching the early caucuses and primaries.

From the perspective of late 2011, the outcome of next year’s presidential contest is still in doubt. While Obama no longer controls his fate, Republicans still must act to control their own. At this point, it is still not certain they will.

November 26, 2011

Occupy Wall Street’s basic refrain “Tax the Rich”, a slogan that has been bandied around by communists and others on the far-left for generations, belies the movement’s basic economic ignorance.

For starters, even if you were to confiscate all of the wealth of every member of the hated top 1 percent, it would not come anywhere near closing the nation’s $1.2 trillion deficit.

George Mason University economist Walter Williams observed in a column last April:

“This year, Congress will spend $3.7 trillion dollars. That turns out to be about $10 billion per day. Can we prey upon the rich to cough up the money? According to IRS statistics, roughly 2 percent of U.S. households have an income of $250,000 and above. By the way, $250,000 per year hardly qualifies one as being rich. It's not even yacht and Learjet money. All told, households earning $250,000 and above account for 25 percent, or $1.97 trillion, of the nearly $8 trillion of total household income. If Congress imposed a 100 percent tax, taking all earnings above $250,000 per year, it would yield the princely sum of $1.4 trillion. That would keep the government running for 141 days, but there's a problem because there are 224 more days left in the year.”

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe observes that these regulations are already having severe negative impacts:

According to Inhofe, the administration’s proposed CO2/greenhouse gas-emission regulations—due out in November—could chop $300 billion to $400 billion alone off the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) each year. Estimates from the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee's Republican staff estimates this regulation could cost in excess of the 2 million jobs that would have been lost as a result of Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill.

Other estimates suggest that the EPA’s Utility MACT and Transport Rule could cost $184 billion and 1.4 million jobs. Statistics Inhofe provided suggest the rule could shutter hundreds of coal-fired power plants around the country—equaling as much as 20% of the nation’s total energy output.

This rule would require 23 states to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions from their power plants to reduce their effects on neighboring states.

The National Associations of Manufacturers estimates the Utility MACT and cross-state air pollution rules will cost its members $18 billion annually, and drive its members’ electricity costs up by 11.5%. It also shares Inhofe’s analysis that these regulations could cost 1.4 million jobs annually.

Coal ash regulations would touch countless industries, such as concrete, road construction, plastics and petrochemicals, among others. The Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy estimated in a June 2011 study that the EPA’s coal ash regulations could cost 316,000 jobs and cost the economy around $110 billion.

The protesters should study economics before attacking capitalism. What would they replace it with – moribund central planning. Even the Soviets and Eastern Europeans found they couldn’t escape the laws of supply and demand.

Socialism only benefits the well-connected and those in political power while squeezing out everyone else. History shows that revolutions only replace one groups of corrupt elites with another even more corrupt group.

Former Gingrich press secretary Tony Blankley tells ConservativeHome USA that the popular desire to elect someone with ideas and substance has fueled the former House speaker’s rise to the top of the polls.

“While most of the people who are running for president are pretty well informed and pretty bright people, most just end up in talking points,” Blankley says. “There’s not a lot of depth to their discussion, and I think that Newt’s standing out in the debates as somebody who’s actually thought deeply on these issues, cares about them and who discusses them both conceptually and in detail.

“And I think that’s why he’s moved up from single digits to anywhere from around 22 to 24 percent after a couple of months of debates.”

Blankley observes that a candidate like Gingrich has appeal because he stands for ideas and results at a time when both parties can’t seem to get the job done. The Supercommittee’s Super failure stands as the latest and most searing example of Washington’s inability to place the country’s needs before political considerations.

“I think not just a lot of conservatives, but also a lot of independents and moderates want to hear somebody who has some idea of how we can improve things,” Blankley says. “That’s Newt’s strength, and now is his moment, I think.”

Gingrich’s former press secretary jokes that you would need a “really large vehicle, maybe an ocean liner” to affix a bumper sticker that would fit all of Newt’s ideas in one place.

But on a more serious note, Blankley suggests that a Gingrich presidency would be the most ambitious of any in recent memory. Blankley saw Gingrich up close on an almost daily basis throughout the Contract With America and the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.

“I was with him about 12 hours a day, particularly before he became speaker where it was just the two of us and a secretary in the room,” Blankley says. “I know him very well.”

According to Blankley, Gingrich was just about the only person in the room in the run up to the 1994 midterms who thought the GOP could win early on and made it happen with his dogged determination.

He predicts that the first eight months of a Newt presidency would be not unlike FDR’s in the event he would win along with sizeable GOP majorities in the House and the Senate.

“It would be like 1933, but we’d be going back in the other direction toward markets and traditional values,” Blankley says. “It would be a really thrilling thing to watch.

“We had a bit of that during the first eight months of the Reagan term in ’81 had some of that; it was a pretty invigorating period where the ideas of the new president won support in Congress and the country.”

Gingrich’s record from the 1980s shows he consistently ran to the right of the Reagan administration, particularly in his insistence on a spending freeze in 1983, which put him at loggerheads with people like James Baker and then OMB Director David Stockman, as Evans and Novak reported in January of that year.

Blankley predicts Gingrich would likely have sizeable majorities in both the House and the Senate, but exact number in the latter chamber being more open to question.

“I think you would see a remarkable period of legislation on deregulating, on attracting health care into a more market-oriented system and on reforming taxes,” Blankley says. “But I can’t imagine anyone who would bring the intellectual vigor or policy agenda to the table as Newt would.”

He characterizes Romney as someone who would be more like “a manager” who would manage the nation’s policy problems incrementally rather than in large jumps unlike Gingrich.

“I think we need to do it in larger jumps,” Blankley says. “So I think comparing a Romney to a Gingrich presidency, I think would see a far more dramatic effort under [Newt] more like he did when he was speaker.

“I think the motivation for him to deliver once he’s committed on something is really powerful.”

To date, Gingrich is the only American politician who committed to balancing the federal budget and succeeded.

Blankley predicts based on his knowledge of Gingrich’s character that the former speaker would only choose people in his cabinet who would get the job done and be most effective. He notes that Gingrich bucked House tradition when he tapped people like now Ohio-Gov. John Kasich to chair the House Budget Committee and Henry Hyde to chair the House Judiciary Committee.

Gingrich is man who isn’t restrained by Washington convention, but who instead has consistently bucked custom to get things done.

“Newt believed you picked people who would deliver people who would deliver the results you committed to,” Blankley says. “And I think you’d see that kind of selection in top appointments, and [his] people wouldn’t be there because some faction of the party wanted them to be there, but [rather] because of the policy commitments he made during the campaign.”

When asked about what he would advise Gingrich to do in response to questions about his personal and business dealings, Blankley suggested that his old friend be direct and truthful with the American public.

Blankley says old accusations such those insinuating that he brought “disrepute on the House” for how he funded a college course he taught while he was speaker will be trotted out. But the facts are in this particular case were that the Clinton IRS found him innocent of the charges against him after he left Congress.

And the same goes with the mistakes he made in his first two marriages.

“I think we’ll have a better opportunity this time to get the truth out than the mischaracterization of it, and I think we’ll have to see how the public balances out the pluses and minuses,” Blankley says.

November 24, 2011

As we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday with our family and friends, let’s remember its important history and all that the holiday stands for. While there were many celebrations before, in 1789, George Washington signed an official proclamation entitled “General Thanksgiving” which called for a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”

Since then, our nation has observed this day as a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude for the blessings in your life. It’s about spending time with your family and loved ones. It’s about giving back and giving thanks.

We must also repurpose ourselves to do all we can to restore our economy and put us on a path to economic growth. This includes creating jobs and putting us on a path toward a balanced budget. I am disappointed the House was not able to pass a balanced budget amendment because our national debt has reached an all time high of $15 trillion—more than $48,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country. It is time to get serious about enacting spending cuts, and I can promise you this defeat is just the start of a long journey to end wasteful Washington spending.